Okay, I take back all the snide remarks about WT. It seems my dream is reality, and that is why we're not hearing anything on this. Here's Jon from the REAPER Blog confirming that WT is creating the interface for v6! We're looking at the future face of REAPER.

Cockos are the best of the best! They continue to make massive improvements, like ARA2 support, while working on what I think is going to be the coup de gras ProTools killer we've all been waiting to see REAPER become! My apologies to WT. Sorry to have doubted you. I should have trusted my instincts! This explains the silence:

Would it have killed him to say hey I can't do this now because I'm working on the future?

I'm not sure I understand this. He is doing this now and we've been looking at the future faces of REAPER in this thread, which is either a test balloon or just caught someone's attention at Cockos. I'm sure he'd love to respond to some of the snarky whinging here (guilty!), but once they made the decision to adopt this officially, WT likely had to sign some sort of NDA and stop releasing updates to the project or commenting on it. Jon mentioned it so casually in that video—as if it was just common knowledge—but that was the first I'd heard of it other than my whimsical remark earlier in this thread. Had anyone else heard anything about this before?

Lets just be glad that REAPER is getting a major facelift. The most common gripe I hear from new REAPER users is about the interface. A couple of people have told me utterly ridiculous things like it feels "unfinished" because "you have to put this thing in that folder" to add functionality, which is like saying a preamp rack is unfinished because you have to plug all those pesky cables into it to record. I couldn't even respond other than to roll my eyes. It's way beyond me how someone could not grasp the power and flexibility REAPER's relatively open structure offers the end user by allowing us to customize and tweak it to our hearts' content! They acted as if things like the SWS Extensions, ReaPack, and the resources in the stash were bad things.

We know REAPER is brilliant, but people react to appearances even when not consciously aware of it, and, as much as I love REAPER, it does still look like someone's class project. Out of the box, it's like a Lamborghini engine inside the body of a Yugo, and even the best themes have some functional quirks or trade-offs. When I'm telling someone about how great REAPER is, I feel obliged to make excuses for the interface design. I think this is partially why a lot of the "names" who are now using it don't talk about it. One company for whom I did graphic design let us do a series of test mailings. We'd send the same sale catalog out to two groups. One group would get it on higher quality paper stock, a layout based on the golden ratio, or some other subtle difference while the other group got cheaper paper or a layout that didn't adhere to premium design principles. To the chagrin of our VP of marketing who though our clients were oblivious to those kinds of details, we often got as much as double the response from the group that received the higher quality mailers. And our clients were construction workers and handymen. We were selling faucets and toilets, not jewelry or perfume.

I'm pretty sure I won't get anyone in trouble if I say that Disney/Pixar have been using REAPER on some of their orchestral recordings for a while. And I originally found out about it from a friend who discovered it while working on a project at Abbey Road, so it's definitely getting noticed by people who are sick of PT's channel limits, horribly inefficient audio engine, lack of support for VSTs, and the general lag in adopting support for new technologies. But some of these guys literally try to hide the fact that they use REAPER. Maybe it's brand snobbery, but I think some it has to do with the interface. (I don't think it's price, because they're fine telling people when they use Logic for something, and it costs 26 USD less than REAPER.) With the interface choices we've seen in this thread, I don't think we'll hear much complaining about the interface anymore, and people will proudly launch it and show it off to their colleagues with pride.

Also, Cockos are usually pretty open about most of what they have in the chute, e.g. offering pre-release builds, etc., but they are pretty silent on v6, FWICT. I've never heard any of their team of testers mention any specifics about what we can expect from v6, have any of you? This is why I think v6 is going to have some majorly innovative features along with this facelift, and these will catapult it to its rightful place at the top of the industry.

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The richest life is the simple one. I just want to make things sing.

Ha! WT has spoken. All the images on the first page have been pulled. Silence is sometimes the loudest communication. (Unless it's just my browser.) I can only think of one reason why they'd be gone. :-D

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The richest life is the simple one. I just want to make things sing.

Ha! WT has spoken. All the images on the first page have been pulled. Silence is sometimes the loudest communication. (Unless it's just my browser.) I can only think of one reason why they'd be gone. :-D

Thank the interface gods! I have Opera blocking so much stuff for privacy/security, which is great most of the time. Dunno why it would block those, though. Went back and had a look in Safari, and, with the exception of the Stockholm theme, got my Imperial lust fix! I don't get the whole Stockholm Syndrome that's going around. Any kid with crayons could make that style of interface. A lid for every pot, I suppose. That's what makes REAPER so great. Everyone's version is unique.

[QUOTE=Bri1;2123310]
+maybe v. 5.999999 for WT Imperial v5!

Jon (REAPER Blog) specifically said v6 in that video (above). Think WT will drop the v# or call it 6 to avoid confusion? I sure hope we get what we've been ogling for the last 3 years!

I find it interesting that audio software users are so into the visuals. I worked in graphic design for 16 years, and the interfaces were so dull. I remember when I saw the first rev of Cubase. Out of all the DAWs available at the time, it was the one that was easiest for me to use because it looked and functioned the most like real hardware. After struggling with PT, Cakewalk, and Logic for the audio editing side of my video production company, Cubase made me feel instantly at home. I could never understand why they called Logic Logic. It was the most unintuitive and illogical DAW of them all. It sure did sound magical, though.

That was almost 20 years ago, and when the first 1GB hard drive hit the market, it changed our whole workflow. Just imagine what we'll be lusting over 20 years from now!

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The richest life is the simple one. I just want to make things sing.

[QUOTE=Xaos;2123914]Thank the interface gods! I have Opera blocking so much stuff for privacy/security, which is great most of the time. Dunno why it would block those, though. Went back and had a look in Safari, and, with the exception of the Stockholm theme, got my Imperial lust fix! I don't get the whole Stockholm Syndrome that's going around. Any kid with crayons could make that style of interface. A lid for every pot, I suppose. That's what makes REAPER so great. Everyone's version is unique.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bri1

+maybe v. 5.999999 for WT Imperial v5!

Jon (REAPER Blog) specifically said v6 in that video (above). Think WT will drop the v# or call it 6 to avoid confusion? I sure hope we get what we've been ogling for the last 3 years!

I find it interesting that audio software users are so into the visuals. I worked in graphic design for 16 years, and the interfaces were so dull. I remember when I saw the first rev of Cubase. Out of all the DAWs available at the time, it was the one that was easiest for me to use because it looked and functioned the most like real hardware. After struggling with PT, Cakewalk, and Logic for the audio editing side of my video production company, Cubase made me feel instantly at home. I could never understand why they called Logic Logic. It was the most unintuitive and illogical DAW of them all. It sure did sound magical, though.

That was almost 20 years ago, and when the first 1GB hard drive hit the market, it changed our whole workflow. Just imagine what we'll be lusting over 20 years from now!

Since you use your eyes to operate the software it's not surprising to me at all that the visuals are important

I'm a bit out of the technology loop. Can Windoze and Linux render vector graphics yet?

"Yet"? They've always been able to. In fact, it's likely there's at least one SVG (the standard vector format) on this very page.

Vector graphics just means "draw a line from this point to this point, draw a curve with this radius from here to here" instead of "this pixel is red, this pixel is white, this pixel is white". There's nothing particularly magical about it, it's just that most software isn't written with it in mind.

"Yet"? They've always been able to. In fact, it's likely there's at least one SVG (the standard vector format) on this very page.

Vector graphics just means "draw a line from this point to this point, draw a curve with this radius from here to here" instead of "this pixel is red, this pixel is white, this pixel is white". There's nothing particularly magical about it, it's just that most software isn't written with it in mind.

I understand vector vs raster. I worked in graphic design for 16 years. What I mean is in the original Core Graphics OS X used the PDF graphic technology to render the onscreen graphics, which is why it was so easy to just print to a PDF. Then they built vector support into the core graphics of of the OS so that it could use scalable vector information to draw the onscreen graphics. This is very different from having an application render it. It's native to the operating system's graphic engine and developers can make calls to the OS libraries instead of writing the code into their app, which is much less efficient because it doesn't have direct access to the hardware.

A good analogy of this is Windows audio. To run audio software at low latency, you have to have the ASIO driver, while the Mac has low latency audio natively because Core Audio was designed to let applications make calls to low levels of the OS, effectively giving them direct access to the hardware. No third party software needed.

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The richest life is the simple one. I just want to make things sing.

As @lokasenna said windows already provides api for rendering vector objects (for more than 20 years). speaking about reaper themes however, a developer must provide scripted theming infrastructure to end-user. That's it. I suppose working with images is easier for end users, maybe more efficient for a system.

Btw vectors are not a salvation.
There are different usage contexts dependent on output devices. Also designing vector based gui may be more complex/harder to a themers. In addition, vectors alone give simplified look only. Those still need to be supported by images to mimic look of some counterparts from real world. such images have to be scaled depending on output devce dpi (or ui scale if available). etc etc.

lolz-- an old saying here goes "close your eyes,and think of england!"
getting ignored is the new black m8.
1 can hope+pray all they like to false prophets all day long,and still get nowhere.?
bless this house.

As @lokasenna said windows already provides api for rendering vector objects (for more than 20 years). speaking about reaper themes however, a developer must provide scripted theming infrastructure to end-user. That's it. I suppose working with images is easier for end users, maybe more efficient for a system.

Btw vectors are not a salvation.
There are different usage contexts dependent on output devices. Also designing vector based gui may be more complex/harder to a themers. In addition, vectors alone give simplified look only. Those still need to be supported by images to mimic look of some counterparts from real world. such images have to be scaled depending on output devce dpi (or ui scale if available). etc etc.

APIs for rendering vectors is very different from having the graphics engine support them at the OS level. In order for it to be efficient enough to use as an interface element, it needs to be built in and tightly integrated with the GPU and drivers, like macOS does/has done for a while now. Apps could always render vector images by making calls to libraries, but it's a totally different thing to have the OS handle them natively. Scaling and rendering complex color shading grids in vector items is pretty intense work, which is why games have used 3D frames with rasterised textures and lighting. It's something that the OS needs to be able to handle easily. I suppose someone could write the video equivalent to ASIO for Windows if video management is as bad in Windows as the audio management is.

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The richest life is the simple one. I just want to make things sing.

Was WT Imperial v5 finished and released? I can't find it in the stash. Thanks

Quote:

Originally Posted by White Tie

Here's what I've been working on for the better part of a year. Its very far from done, 6 months to go would be my guess. I'm sharing it because I think its very good and the world is full of good things and on some days its good to remember that. I also want to get the WALTER out because I believe some of it could be extremely useful to other themers.

On that subject : please feel free to raid the WALTER and use whatever bits of code you might find useful (suggestion: the imageshift macros are very simple but do wonderful things). However, I must insist that you do not use any of the images or make mods of the theme or anything like that yet, let me finish first. I'm including an awful lot of code and alternative images to make modding easy and powerful, in good time.

Its just the mixer so far, that's where I started. Because, well, its Imperial.

The build I am sharing is the latest one that is currently in use by my testers. Its moderately usable. I'm not necessarily looking for feedback at the moment, I've got plenty of testers who I trust implicitly, but if you're curious then please feel free to take a look. Here's the theme file; DON'T MAKE ME REGRET SHARING IT m'kay?

Its Imperial, it looks like Imperial. But more so. The ethos remains as it was; to take a lot of space and use it to show everything at once, with generous sizing and margins to make control searching and mouse-hit easy. The old Imperial scored extremely high in function and usability testing, my hope and expectation is this will perhaps surpass it.

Imperial didn't resize because I designed it to be used full screen. Which people didn't necessarily want to do. So now its got full WALTER on every layout, so the sizes degrade elegantly:

I have made extensive use of the new custom colouring method we got in V5:

And, of course, the 'None More Black' layout is back:

...which showcases what can be done with custom colouring. I'll be doing more of this in time, and different patterns.

This layout can also be used to commit crimes against humanity:

The flat styled 'Stockholm' layout is ideal for your synth tracks:

it also has custom colouring tricks, and some pan control implementations that you might like:

Imperial was designed for big screens, and preferably two of them. But people wanted to use it on small screens. Okay, fine Here's the 'project' layout, which has full shrinking WALTER, folder indenting, and a selection of fader colours. And a None More Black variant, of course.

Speaking of small size, I've completely redesigned the Sidecar layout. It features my new iris-style stacked pan/width knobs:

It custom colours nicely, and has a sophisticated folder indentation / signal flow design that I think works well:

here's what all that stuff means:

I've based the redesigned Tracking Deck layout on the Sidecar:

and finally there are strip layouts. These have 'USER : mess with these:' sections in the WALTER so users can easily whip up variants:

Please enjoy. I might do another snapshot build once its further along, we'll see.

Work on this theme was put on hold while I went through the whole process of learning scripting then building the Default 6 theme and theme adjuster.

Work on this theme may resume soon, if time allows. I hadn't looked at this thread in a long time, and ....Oh My God. It will remain on hold if Coachz posts in this thread, in any way, ever, and yes I'm serious. And if anyone else wants to get angry that they haven't received updates to their free theme ...sheeesh.

I'm going to have to give this theme another go. I thought it looked awesome, but it was a bit too busy for me.. but I didn't realize there were so many different layouts, many of which look right up my alley. Damn, this is a work of art.

WT, I wish you had full control over designing the R6 theme, but that one I've started to like quite a bit more too.

I'm going to have to give this theme another go. I thought it looked awesome, but it was a bit too busy for me.. but I didn't realize there were so many different layouts, many of which look right up my alley. Damn, this is a work of art.

WT, I wish you had full control over designing the R6 theme, but that one I've started to like quite a bit more too.

I looked through all these and the mixer visuals look wonderful. Then I went back to the Reaper 6 theme at 150% which is so much better for me from a practicality perspective, and it isn't actually ugly or stylistically incongruent to me, just functional.

[QUOTE=White Tie;1754940]Here's what I've been working on for the better part of a year. Its very far from done, 6 months to go would be my guess. I'm sharing it because I think its very good and the world is full of good things and on some days its good to remember that. I also want to get the WALTER out because I believe some of it could be extremely useful to other themers.

Looks very nice! I've re-purchased another license for REAPER V6.x after having worked with MAGIX SAMPLITUDE Pro X4 Suite for a while and hot damn, V6.x seems MUCH faster now.. Faster than Pro X4's Dual engines even because I'm experiencing clicks etc with ONE instance X 16 VI's where in REAPER V6.x I've loaded 16(!) instances of KOMPLETE KONTROL with 7.1 surround and effects routing and not as much as a click anywhere.. BRAVO Cockos.. NICE Progress..

Speaking of progress? Now that V6.x is out, will your new IMPERIAL theme support COCKOS Plugin integration etc?

The best thing you can do for you is ignore the detractors and continue forward without giving them any acknowledgment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by White Tie

Its in post #1 of this thread, help yourself.

Work on this theme was put on hold while I went through the whole process of learning scripting then building the Default 6 theme and theme adjuster.

Work on this theme may resume soon, if time allows. I hadn't looked at this thread in a long time, and ....Oh My God. It will remain on hold if Coachz posts in this thread, in any way, ever, and yes I'm serious. And if anyone else wants to get angry that they haven't received updates to their free theme ...sheeesh.

i Really love this theme, v6 theme too. and i feel happy about your and reaper colaboration.

Imperial is the most desired theme for most of the users (if you ask me ).

don't take some solt close to your heart, solt is need to sterilise food and thought

i steel imagine one day, when i can preview or purchaise official reaper themes, JS plugins from Specific content menu inside reaper 6.5. and see imperial as best seller there. (not a bad idea).

a Service where skilled community users can upload their work and make some money from it, it will make to grow our community and reaper user base too. it will be one of the best community relationtip i think. All great works have to be paied (even money is not the main think in life, donation/paiment makes people respect each other. especially then when wasting precious time for public).